Relative Importance
by chaserzachsmith
Summary: When Oliver Wood was twelve, he made the Gryffindor reserve team.


Oliver's father explained the wizard thing to him when he was eight years old. "See, you're a wizard," Jason said. "You're a wizard, because I'm a wizard, and in three years I'm going to send you to a wizards' school."

Oliver pondered that. "So's that how I turned all my blankets blue last year?"

"Yes," said Jason.

Oliver pondered some more. "Do wizards have rugby, or football?" He phrased it as though there was no other option- and to him, at eight, there wasn't.

"Wizards have what's called Quidditch," said Jason.

Quidditch!

* * *

"You're not allowed to have a broom until your second year," said Jason around his cigarette, when they were shopping in Diagon Alley.

That was a dumb rule, but Oliver could forgive it. It made sense.

After all, Quidditch was a crazy and dangerous sport. Oliver loved it even without ever having seen a game. It was played in midair with flying balls that tried to kill you. What was there that wasn't great about that?

In the first match of first year, he couldn't take his eyes off of the Chasers- zooming and flipping and zigzagging wildly around the pitch. He only looked away to spot Charlie Weasley hurtling through the air at the Snitch, hovering behind the Slytherin goalposts. He dodged the Bludgers, dodged the Chasers, swerved around the Keeper and Chasers.

Oliver jumped to his feet when Charlie caught the Snitch. He couldn't remember ever being so thrilled.

Quidditch was a matter of life and death, really.

* * *

He loved flying lessons, of course. Paid as much attention as he could, borrowed Quidditch Through the Ages in case it helped him prepare, asked Madam Hooch how he could improve his technique. He was going to get onto the team if it killed him.

Which wasn't unlikely, he thought one day, when he'd fallen off his broom into a tree. But he wasn't going to let something as easy to fix as a broken rib and ankle stop him.

He stopped Charlie outside the Common Room one day to tell him that he'd done great in the game against Hufflepuff. Charlie gave him a bemused smile and said Uh, thanks. Oliver forgot how to breathe.

* * *

He made it onto the team in second year, as the reserve Keeper. It wasn't a particularly glamourous role- after all, he wasn't actually on the team- but he was proud of it anyway.

He played in the match against Ravenclaw when the regular Keeper got a bad concussion twenty minutes into the game, and it was the best seventeen minutes of his life, until Charlie got the Snitch. At the party that night in the Gryffindor Common Room, Charlie and Max hoisted him up on their shoulders to raucous applause.

Oliver loved Quidditch. Loved it.

* * *

When the regular Keeper graduated Oliver made the real team, and just like that it was like Hogwarts took on a different skin. He was a part of something big, a member of a phenomenon, a somebody for the first time in his life.

His whole life it'd been just him and his dad, and even though his dad liked sports or had friends it wasn't like they'd been a part of something. They'd just been the Woods, Jason and Oliver and their little house. He had a hand-me-down broom- though when Oliver'd made the team, his dad had sent brand-new Keeper gear and robes in the post two days later.

It made him feel important, was all.

* * *

Charlie's little brothers, when they got on the team, became Oliver's best friends. They'd stay up 'til the morning talking about Quidditch, and they were his first introduction to the big leagues.

"You don't ever want to support Chudley," said Fred. "Only losers do."

"Harpies are good," said George. "Arrows are sort of awful, lately, but they had a good run in the seventies. Or my dad says, at least."

"Best team is Puddlemere," said Fred.

"Puddlemere?" said Oliver.

* * *

"Puddlemere?" said Jason, when he got home. "God, I knew I shoulda taken you to some games when you were a kid. Get you into a cool team, like the Bats. My fault."

"Hmph," said Oliver. His dad had withdrawn almost entirely from the Wizarding World in adulthood- though Oliver would get it when he was older, he was fourteen then and thought it was abominably stupid.

"Puddlemere's good 'nuff though," said Jason. He grinned and ruffled Oliver's hair, then huffed some smoke up at the ceiling. "You're gonna keep playing, then?"

"What kind of question's that?" said Oliver.

"'Snothing," said Jason, inscrutable.

* * *

"Captain! Me!" said Oliver.

His dad, arms crossed, grinning over Oliver's shoulder into the mirror as Oliver tried in vain to get his badge to to sit straight. "You'll wear it out," he said.

"Shove it," said Oliver gleefully. "I guess they're stuck with me, I was the oldest on the team."

Jason reached around him to fix the badge and said, "Give yourself some credit, son. They still picked you."

"I don't even remember a fifth year ever being captain," said Oliver. "Least not when I was at school. Not in any of the houses."

"So be proud of yourself," said Jason, and he shook Oliver's shoulder fondly.

He was! But he was nervous, too.

Captain was important, was all. Quidditch was important.

* * *

His team was the best one he could have asked for, that year. Brilliant Chasers, brilliant Beaters, a brand new Seeker who was just gold.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we get the Cup back," he said to Professor McGonagall.

"Hope so," she said drily. "Please remember you are students first, Mr. Wood."

"I do," said Oliver.

"But," she added, "Please do try and win the Cup. I miss it."

* * *

They didn't win it that year, or the next year, but on the last match of his last year, when the professional recruiters were scouting out him and the Ravenclaw seventh years, they did, and as Oliver was hollering himself hoarse with the Weasleys he watched Professor McGonagall beaming and clapping, as Lee Jordan next to her hooted into his microphone.

He went to Puddlemere, and his dad grinned and thumped him heartily on the back and said "Shoulda gotten you into the Bats as a kid! Goddammit!"

It was as though, for the next few years, his life ceased to exist outside of the team. He was grateful when, in 1995, Angelina Johnson started writing him about the team. It was a reminder that at Hogwarts things were still happening. That while Quidditch had become his daily life, it wasn't like that outside.

"Been a while," remarked Jason, when Oliver went home for Christmas.

"Yeah," mumbled Oliver.

"Listened to the match against the Arrows," said Jason, gesturing to the wireless. "Bloody fantastic."

"Thanks," said Oliver. He was going to leave it there but he knew his dad had brought it up to hear him talk. It was easier, maybe, to pretend that Quidditch was a matter of life and death.

"Wasn't expecting to go on in that match, they have a really strong set of Chasers, but once Wimberley took that Bludger they threw me in- and it was close for a while 'til I figured out, see, they've got this one Chaser who likes to feint to the other side and I figured out she only does it in some circumstances, so I could predict where she was heading."

"Which one's that?" said Jason. "Noticed you saved a lot from Gregory."

"Yeah, it was Gregory," said Oliver. "It wasn't hard. You just have to be perceptive."

"That's my boy," said Jason.

* * *

At first he'd worried that he'd lose his job, since the Ministry was undergoing such rapid change. Things all across Britain and Ireland were going so far south so quickly- who had time for Quidditch? One afternoon Oliver sat at the table and cut the classifieds out of the Daily Prophet, went through them with erasable ink.

"Smart," said Tom Bradley, the reserve Seeker, when he saw.

"You want some?" said Oliver, and he half-jokingly pushed the paper across the table.

"C'mon, what have I got?" said Tom. "I went straight into Quidditch. Barely took my NEWTs."

Oliver had gotten okay NEWTs, but there was truth in Tom's comments. He didn't have skills. He had Quidditch.

But there wound up being nothing to worry about. Even as members of the team started disappearing, even as Angelina's letters got more cryptic, even once his dad's wand was taken away, Quidditch kept going. Their replacement captain, Darius Mopp, said before each game that they were going to try to win for the rest of us.

Not that winning did the rest of them any good. Angelina visited to tell him about Potterwatch in person, distrusting the Floo network, and every week he and Tom and the reserve Beaters would sit in the kitchen of their house, or in their hotel rooms, and listen.

It was so foreign and yet so familiar, to hear Lee Jordan's commentary on what was just an enormous, deadly, horrible game. And one that they were losing.

"Wish I was doing literally anything," he said, when he and his roommates were sitting together drowsily round the wireless. The Potterwatch broadcast had been cut short. They were all wondering.

Tom snorted. "Like what, whacking 'em with bats?"

They all laughed for a moment, half-heartedly. Oliver didn't bother to explain himself.

* * *

He didn't stop by to visit his dad nearly as much as he ought to have, that year. Jason had lost his job, his wand, some of his friends. He moved in with his sister, smoked more.

The first time Oliver visited they talked about Quidditch until they were out of things to say, and then they sat in quiet silence as Jason put his cigarette out and Oliver ran through a list of famous players in his head. The second time, Oliver made an excuse after two hours and went home. The third time, they only made it through lunch.

His dad always asked what he knew about the war- as a Muggleborn, Jason was wary of contacting his old friends or colleagues about it. Oliver, who was a professional athlete who only heard about the war on the radio, felt miserable having only rumors to relay.

When he wanted to visit again, he sent money instead.

* * *

The night Harry Potter broke into Gringotts, Angelina Johnson Apparated into Oliver's room, hugged him tightly, then Side-Alonged him to Hogsmeade. It took her roughly three seconds; Oliver was nauseous for half an hour afterwards.

Outside, there was a horrible, high wailing- somebody's Caterwauling Charm gone off- and inside was a crowd. Oliver, trying to get his bearings, was shocked to spot the Weasley twins, Alicia, and Katie among the sea of older, more serious adults. They all waded towards him and Angelina as soon as they saw, and Oliver bit back a surge of oh my God, they've grown up, haven't they? and turned to Angelina, who owed him an explanation.

"What's happened?" he said.

"I realised you wouldn't have a Galleon," she said, "So I had to go get you."

"I play professional Quidditch," said Oliver, confused. "I have plenty."

"No, not that," said Katie. "Oliver- You-Know-Who's on his way to Hogwarts. There are students there. And Harry's back."

"Harry?" repeated Oliver.

Even after so much had happened his first thought was still, that's my Seeker!

"You can go home," said Katie, quietly. "If you want. I know you have a game tomorrow."

It was true, there was a game the next day. Oliver shook his head. "Forget that," he said. "Are we fighting?"

"Yes," said Katie and Alicia together, and Katie smiled slightly at the coincidence.

Oliver looked at his team. Suddenly he was ashamed that he'd spent the last ten months just playing Quidditch. "Am I glad to see you all again," he said.

"Yeah, yeah, you too, old boy," said George, and grinned.

* * *

He was heading back down to the ground floor on foot. He had a broom with him- not his, somebody had told him and a few other ex-Quidditch students to fly round the giants and distract them- but just now he wanted to be on the ground.

He couldn't say he was in his right state of mind. Hogwarts was still burning, in the distance, everybody he knew was grieving somebody, he was too. He was stumping back into the Great Hall when he heard his dad's voice, gruff with relief.

"Oliver."

Jason seemed too tentative to hug him, so Oliver wrapped his arms around his dad instead, allowed himself some ill-timed shock at how thin he seemed. "Ollie, shit, your head," said Jason, and Oliver laughed a little, remembering too late that the side of his head was caking with blood.

"'Snothing," he said. "How'd you- how'd you get here?" His dad was Muggleborn- he'd pled guilty and they'd taken his wand away. And Oliver, drowsy and injured and miserable, couldn't make himself think about who his dad could have gotten to side-along Apparate him.

"Came up on the radio," said Jason, drawing back a little to look him over. "That there was a battle going down at Hogwarts, and I knew you'd be here if you knew."

Oliver was near tears. Fred Weasley was dead, Wizarding Britain was saved, the Quidditch pitch was burning in the distance, his dad was holding him by the arms. He'd graduated so long ago, it seemed, and it struck him that he wasn't that old at all.

"C'mon," said Jason. "We can go home."

Even though he had a game in four hours, even though he probably needed to see a Healer, even though he didn't even know what Jason meant by "home" now that they'd both moved away, Oliver wanted nothing more. "Go on without me," he said. "I'll catch up."

* * *

Outside on the front steps, Angelina Johnson was sitting with her head in her hands. She didn't look up when Oliver sat next to her, long legs folding awkwardly in front of them. She'd been crying, so he looked straight ahead at the smoke in the air.

"You know," said Angelina, "when they write the articles in the Prophet about this, they're not going to talk about the centaurs. They're not going to mention Hagrid's hut. Or the Quidditch pitch. Or the house elves."

Oliver followed her gaze to her hands, shaking as she wrung them. "No," he agreed.

"We'll remember what's important, I guess," said Angelina.

"The Quidditch pitch?" said Oliver, just a little ironically. Sitting on the edge of the rubble here, sooty and bloody, it felt so insignificant that once he'd been concerned about the Quidditch Cup. Angelina must feel the same way, he reckoned.

"He's going to be listed in the paper as a member of the Order," said Angelina. "In the obituaries."

They sat in quiet acknowledgement of their mutual denial. Someday they'd both feel it. Not yet, though. "He was a damn good Beater," said Angelina.

Oliver laughed. "He was," he said. "I remember when he first tried out, he almost took out half the real team."

"Did I tell you how many practices he and George tried to skip out of?" said Angelina, smiling through tears. "Their bloody Skiving Snackboxes."

The sun was shining brightly through the chilly morning; far away, Puddlemere United put in its first alternate for Keeper.

* * *

Note:

This was in progress since November of 2017 (I actually went and checked) so thanks are, of course, in order: All my gratitude and love to my friend Emily for telling me, when this was like five paragraphs long, that she loved Oliver's loser dad, since my realisation thereafter that I, too, loved his loser dad completely changed the course this took.


End file.
